Jekyll and Isso

Starting today our blog not longer uses wordpress but is powered by the static site generator Jekyll and the new self-hosted commenting system Isso.

Jekyll is written in Ruby and is the magic tool behind all GitHub pages. It allows to write our posts in simple markdown like we already did in wordpress with a plugin but now offline and with the power of your personal favored text editor (like Sublime Text). Jekyll takes the posts, a set of templates, styles and configuration options and generates a complete set of static files that are deployed on our server. This also speeds up the page as nginx simply serves static (and partially also pre-gziped) files now.

The major drawback of static page is that everything is static now. Lot of other static pages use Disqus to inject a commenting area into their pages, but this means not only relaying on an external service but also letting our visitors getting potentially tracked by Disqus. Here comes Isso to our rescue. Isso is a self-hosted commenting systems that can also be injected in our static pages via JavaScript. Your comments are saved on the same server as the blog and no external service is required. (btw. same goes for our web font - locally hosted - no Google).

Additional the new blog system allows us to extend our already broad range of topics with new articles about Jekyll as well as our own additions, plugins and deployment methods. Expect some articles soon.